Conservative podcaster Doug Billings, the first candidate to officially file to run for governor, is already running into campaign turbulence.
Billings’ running mate, April McCoy, said in an interview Thursday that she was withdrawing as his running mate for personal reasons.
“I am really confident in my decision,” she said.
Billings, a Republican, could not be reached for comment by phone or email late Thursday afternoon.
McCoy’s decision to withdraw presents an issue for the secretary of state’s office.
State law requires candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to file together, run on the ballot together and be elected together.
It’s the only joint office in state government. Before 1974, the governor and the lieutenant campaigned separately.
The question now facing election officials is whether Billings can pick a new candidate or is the candidacy terminated, forcing him to refile with another running mate.
The secretary of state’s office said it’s exploring the next step.
McCoy’s decision to withdraw comes a little more than a month after Billings posted a video on Facebook discussing past legal troubles that he’s faced – both in situations where he said he was falsely accused and “targeted by a weaponized legal system.”
He said in two cases he took a deal to avoid public attention and immense legal costs.
Efforts to reach Billings about his Facebook video and his book were unsuccessful as early as June 25.
Billings is running in a Republican primary field that includes former Gov. Jeff Colyer, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt and former Wichita school board member Joy Eakins and two other candidates.
McCoy said her decision to leave the campaign was not related to anything Billings discussed about his past.
“I was aware of that,” she said. “He did come forward and talk about that on social media and he addressed all that with the team.”
Billings highlighted accusations that he said “inappropriate things” to two female students when he was working as an English teacher in 1993 at an alternative high school where the student population tended to be older.
He also explained the incident in his 2010 book, “Your Wonderful Life” where he said the accusation included propositioning the two female students.
He called the accusations “extraordinary.”
Billings said the accusations were revenge for him suspending the students’ privileges such as cigarette breaks and using a game room with darts, pool tables and soda machines.
He said a security guard and another student overheard the female students plotting against him.
He said in his book that he hired a lawyer because the students had filed a police report.
“The attorney laid out the scenario for my wife and me,” Billings wrote.
“I could go either go to court and have a jury trial and clear my name publicly or I could take care of this ‘behind the scenes’ and plea bargain in order to have it erased from my record without the publicity of a trial,” he wrote.
“I’m a guy who, for the most part, goes to lengths to avoid confrontation. The thought of having a jury trial over this issue was frightening to me,” he wrote.
“There were no guarantees of how a jury would see the situation. My name and image would be all over the radio and television.”
Billings does not go into detail in the book about where he was teaching nor what charges he was facing and where he was in court.
Billings said in his book that the “emotional trauma seemed too much to bear” so he opted for a plea bargain and “got rid of the issue with no criminal record.”
He said he didn’t have to surrender his teaching license, although he lost his teaching job at the time. He said he went on to teach again.
“Even though things seemed to work out, there was a ‘cloud’ over me that labeled me as a teacher who was accused of inappropriate behavior,” he wrote.
He said his wife, who stood behind him throughout the ordeal, left him because she “fell victim to the strain, emotional trauma and the burden of it all.”
He added that a sheriff’s deputy showed up at his door and served him with papers ordering him out of his house immediately.
“I’ve never run from that issue,” Billings said in his Facebook video. “It’s taught me how lies can be weaponized against you. I refuse to let those lies define me.
“Every day Americans who are innocent go to the court system because of the weaponized system that we have,” he said.
“And because they have limited funds and limited ability to defend themselves properly or as they would really like to, they make deals and they get on with their lives to avoid a public spectacle. It happens every day.”
In his Facebook video, Billings relates a story from 18 years ago when he was working as a human resources manager and set up a bank account to hold funds for a company while he waited for the corporate office to create its own account.
“Before everything happened with the new account, I was falsely accused again of misappropriating those funds,” Billings said in the video.
“It was a low-grade felony charge. That was serious and it’s a big deal.
“Not one dime of that money was missing,” he said. “The company had it all. But because of a weaponized legal system, there were charges to face. And I faced them head on just like President Trump did.
“I’ve never misused a dime of that money. The company had full account of everything there,” he said. “I took a deal to avoid crushing legal costs and the persecution that was going to follow.”
Without going into details about the company and the charges that he faced, Billings said the case was ultimately expunged. He said he never went to jail or lost his right to vote.
Billings said he was going public about his past because he believed the “deep state swamp” sees his MAGA, pro-Trump agenda as a threat.
Billings promised to run as a gubernatorial candidate who stands for “faith” and “freedom.”
He called for prayer in schools, promised to eliminate “pornographic material” he said was in schools and would end the “LGBT kook movement” in Kansas.
He said only an American flag would be flown in schools and said he would have used the National Guard to keep Satanists from gathering at the Capitol.
He suggested creating a voluntary militia – men from the age of 21 to 45 – to help the National Guard keep the peace in Kansas.
Billings has said he would launch a Kansas version of Elon Musk’s DOGE committee, although something similar was set up in the Kansas Senate this year.
“The campaign scares them,” he said. “So, they’re going to begin to smear me and they’re going to say awful things.
“You would expect it,” he said.
“I know, ladies and gentleman, you know what the swamp is. They’re going to dredge up these old and very settled matters to smear me just like they did with President Trump.
“What we represent scares the hell out of them and they are engaging with the powers of hell to smear us.”
